


Dress You Up In My Love

by pilindiel



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Demon Hunter!Marco, Demon Hunters, Guilt, M/M, Minor Violence, Mutual Pining, Nurse!Jean, POV First Person, POV Marco Bott, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 08:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11353242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pilindiel/pseuds/pilindiel
Summary: His dad's office is the opposite – all wood floors with a sturdy desk, eclectic colors, and a hodgepodge of photos and papers that add to the clutter.  The light from overhead is warm, a contrast from the creepy sterile feel of the living room, and Jean looks golden with the combination of that and the moonlight streaming through the dusty curtains.  I want to say something, to thank him for whatever he's willing to give me right now, but I just bite my lip and let the silence linger.Prompt: nurse!Jean and demon hunter!Marco are teenagers. Marco is trying to fix his disastrous hair in a creepy house and Jean joins him.





	Dress You Up In My Love

When I stumble up to Jean's front door, my spare key fitting neatly into the lock, he barely looks up from his perch on the couch. I know I look like a mess – my hair is ruffled and caked with blood – and the sticky, metallic smell has been burning my nostrils since I finished my job for the night.

I have no idea how late it is. The last time I looked at my phone was eons ago, and it was only to shoot a text to the scruffy blond who snaps his book shut and gives me an exasperated stare. I give him a small, apologetic smile, and he ushers me into his dad's office like he has hundreds of times before without a word.

His shove is rough, so it must be deep into the night. That, or he must be really worried. I try not to dwell too much on it – I get to see him, and for now that's enough for me.

I dutifully sit in his dad's enormously comfortable leather chair, sinking into the old cushions, and Jean flicks on the florescent floor lamp, bending its flexible neck to his will to shine against my scalp. I watch him silently and can't help but smile as he ducks to wrestle with one of the cabinet doors, grumbles something under his breath and tugs out his well-stocked first-aid kit.

Jean's house is huge; spacious and the picture of modern elegance, without the familiar lived-in clutter that most homes on our side of the neighborhood have. Sleek, chic, sparse, and empty. I could tell, even back when we first met, that it suffocated him.

His dad's office is the opposite – all wood floors with a sturdy desk, eclectic colors, and a hodgepodge of photos and papers that add to the clutter. The light from overhead is warm, a contrast from the creepy sterile feel of the living room, and Jean looks golden with the combination of that and the moonlight streaming through the dusty curtains. I want to say something, to thank him for whatever he's willing to give me right now, but I just bite my lip and let the silence linger.

I was six years old when I fell in love with him. I was all tiny jean overalls and scrapped knees and missing baby teeth and he was skinny limbs and scabbed elbows and scruffy blond hair. His parents were unpacking their lives but Jean looked reserved, angry, and I grabbed his hand and took him to the neighborhood creek. We played for hours in that spring warmth, getting mud and dirty, sandy water on our clothes. I remember, way back when he first smiled at me with dirt splashed on his cheeks, that there was something about him I wanted to keep. Something I wanted to protect.

I trampled up the front steps to my kitchen and loudly proclaimed to my mom, dripping on the linoleum floor and covered in sludge, that I found the person I was going to marry.

Now, I trail in a different kind of dirt into my life, a different kind of ooze.

“Do I _**want**_ to know what you fought tonight?” Jean asks, one hand on his hip and the other holding up antiseptic wipes and butterfly closures for the gash at my hairline. I give him a shrug, a small smile. He sighs, and I can feel the disappointment and worry from that breath flutter against my heart.

“Tilt your head up,” he instructs and I do so, squinting my eyes at the bright florescence that greets me. Jean moves into my space and even though he's done this hundreds of times, my heart still catches at the feeling of having him so close, the desperate urge to melt into his warmth and feel his skin beneath my fingertips.

We're not children anymore. He fills out his t-shirts better now, the thin outlines of muscle pulling at his skin as he moves and his shoulders are broader, his face more drawn.

Though maybe that's just the worry and concentration etched between his brows that makes him look so much older.

Jean's knee presses against the squeaking leather chair, brushing the outside of my thigh, and the heat that shoots through me at the contact is almost enough to make me jump.

Almost.

Thankfully, I can use my guilt to stave it off and it curls deep in my stomach.

I swallow thickly and try not to stare at Jean's enticing collarbones and neck as he leans over me, and the silver chain he has around him catches the light. It's the charm I gave him back when I started this job, a protection from any harm that may follow me home to him. I swallow, and that guilt curls a little more tightly around my heart.

Jean's thin fingers reach out and guide my chin, a gentle tug that sends me reeling. I try to tell myself that it's just so he can see my cut better, try to tell myself that the flush of heat from his fingers is normal because I'm so touch starved, but he tears the wrapper off the antiseptic wipe with his teeth and my brain turns to lust-filled mush. I try desperately hard to focus on the sting of the medicine against my heated skin and not how insanely hot that was, how I wish that wrapper was something else entirely and I could just reach my hands out and outline his breathing with the palms of my hands, pull him in my lap and taste the sweet tang of his lips.

But my hands stay where they are on the arms of the chair, curling into the leather and pretending like the sting of the medicine is anywhere near the ache I'm feeling in my chest.

_Pull yourself together, Marco. He's your best friend. Best childhood friend. You know, like a brother to you and all that bullshit you tell yourself before you start touching yourself at night._

I let a pathetic laugh push past my lips and Jean stills for a moment in his ministrations.

“Somethin' funny?” he asks, but there's the ghost of a smirk there and I know he's as desperate to break this silence as I am, “Or is that concussion finally getting to you?”

“Hardy har,” I reply, rolling my eyes. Still, there's that mischievous gleam in his eyes now, dancing among the gold and copper of his irises, and I have to bite my bottom lip to stop from grinning too wide.

“So, tell me the truth, _**doc**_ ,” I say melodramatically, a hand over my chest, “Am I going to make it?”

Jean's smirk widens and the things it does to my heart are worse than any injury.

“I don't know,” he hums, deftly pinching my skin closed and applying the closure with warm, calloused fingers, “You should probably stay overnight so I can keep an eye on you.”

The implication is not lost on me, but Jean seems to stumble once he realizes what he's said. My heart flutters and I must look like a deer in the headlights with the nervous way his gaze flits down to my owlish blinking.

If I were more awake, I would swear pink was coloring his cheeks.

“Just to...Y'know,” Jean elaborates, clears his throat, busies his hands with throwing the trash away, “I uh...Already texted your mom anyway, c-cause I figured you would...y'know, stop by here first and it...Well, um...it's gotten late and I already set up the sleeping bag in my room, so I just – ”

He slides his leg off the chair in his haste and the loss is so immediate that I lurch forward and grab his wrist, like it's a reflex.

I can lie to other people about how I feel all I want – can weave falsehoods and fabrications into little slips of my smile and flicks of my hand – but I can't lie to myself. And I don't ever want to lie to Jean.

Jean stills at least, and his pulse races beneath my fingertips as I pull myself out of the suction of the chair to his side.

In the glow of the lamp and the shadowed moon outside he looks perfect – flaxen and sunny even in the gloom – and I wish I had the courage to pull him towards me, to breathe in the scent of the Abercrombie and Fitch cologne he insisted was worth the price tag, and let my lips ghost over his skin.

His eyes are trained on the floor by his socked feet, burning into the grain, and uncertainty clogs my throat.

I don't have that strength.

Instead, I give him a smile – one of the rare, honest ones I only reserve only for him – and say, “That sounds great, Jean.”

He smiles back, warm and sincere, and for now this is enough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> AN EARLY POST???? WHAAAAT
> 
> But yes, I actually had this finished before the "Chains" prompt and I didn't want to upload both in one day, so here is tomorrow's generator prompt and I'll post the actual prompt tomorrow.
> 
> I hope you guys enjoyed this?? I love me some pining!Marco and I hope his love and hesitance came through.


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